


It's A Work In Progress

by providing_leverage



Series: Short stuff [7]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Jace struggling with his sexuality, Multi, Post Season 2, Technically pre Jimon, he's very confused, makes some new human friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22058506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/providing_leverage/pseuds/providing_leverage
Summary: Alec would have, Jace realizes. Alec might actually have done this before.He hadn't done any kind of research, just ridden the eight o'clock train as far as it would take him from the Institute and googled gay bars near me.His fingers had shaken so badly, he'd barely been able to type the words.
Relationships: Clary Fray/Isabelle Lightwood, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Simon Lewis/Jace Wayland
Series: Short stuff [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1477400
Comments: 3
Kudos: 144





	It's A Work In Progress

**Author's Note:**

> Holy crap this is longer than intended. But I finally figured out how you make it so the spacing between paragraphs isn't so large!

The bar was oddly crowded for a Wednesday, Jace thought. This place must be more popular than he'd thought. Then again, he hadn't exactly done a background check on the place, or a stake out.

 _Alec would have,_ Jace realizes. _Alec might actually have done this before._

He hadn't done any kind of research, just ridden the eight o'clock train as far as it would take him from the Institute and googled _gay bars near me._

His fingers had shaken so badly, he'd barely been able to type the words.

The place was called, for whatever reason, _Therapy._ The name made him think of Simon's urgent face after Jace made some throw away comment about his childhood. _"I think you might be in need of some therapy, Jace."_

The story hadn't even been about one of the more awful things that had happened to him while he lived with Valentine.

Pushing Simon from his mind, Jace raises an arm to signal the bartender. He doesn't recognize anything on the menu, so used to the Hunter's Moon and sometimes Pandemonium.

"Whatever you like best, sweetheart." He says with a smile, out of habit and not actual interest. The woman, who has short spiky hair, a nose ring, and most likely a lesbian just gives him an amused look before turning to fill a glass.

The swivel stool next to him creaks as a person sits. "Looks like someone wandered into the wrong bar," a man's voice says. Not cruel, slightly teasing.

Still Jace tenses a bit, fights the urge to either reach for weapons he hadn't brought or bolt out the door. He doesn't turn, but observes from the corner of his eye.

The man who had spoken to him was in his mid twenties, and reminded Jace oddly of Magnus. If Magnus was a lot darker skinned and had a shaved head.

Perhaps it was the multiple piercings, the eyeliner, or maybe the way he held himself, filled with a lust for life. Also, Magnus was not a mundane as this man was so obviously.

He was in a mundane bar. Of course the guy was mundane.

Before Jace can come up with a reply, the bartender returns to set down a beer and say "Oh, leave him alone Sam. I like the look of this one, you can tell he's got an interesting story to tell."

"Thanks. I think." Says Jace, pulling the beer to him. It doesn't taste bad.

The man, Sam, keeps looking at him. Jace can feel his gaze. He glances over, finds the man's startling blue eyes roving over his body, his muscles, and the runes decorating his skin. He is being checked out.

Not an unusual feeling, even from men. But for some reason his skin prickles tonight, and Jace finds himself gripping the glass a bit tight.

Sam notices, somehow. "You know, being checked out by other guys in part of the aithentic gay bar experience. If it makes you uncomfortable, there are plenty of straight bars around here."

"I'm not…" Jace trails off, unsure of how to finish the sentence. _Straight, lost, sure if what I'm doing?_ All of those are partially true in one way or another.

The mundane seems to think it's the first. "Oh, well then." He leans back. "You exude rigidly heterosexuality. Do we have a Questioner on our hands?"

The man's voice is filled with overly dramatic curiosity and delight. He's so Magnus, just a much younger and less filled with deep, unshakeable kindness.

"You really don't know how to leave a person alone, do you Sam?" The spikey haired bartender returns with another beer for Jace and a bright pink cocktail for Sam.

The dark skinned man laughs. "You know me Lilliana. I'm beginning to think this guy has a more interesting story than I'd previously assumed, and you know the journalist in me can't let a story go."

Nerves grow again in his stomach, but he's always been good at ignoring his feelings. That's how he ended up here. "It's a pretty long story." Jace puts in before he can stop himself.

"I've got time." Sam's bright blue eyes meet Jace's mismatched pair. "And I'll buy your drinks for the night in return for your troubles."

The offer of free booze, and Simon's words once again echoing in his head ( _You know, therapy. Talking to a person about your problems to help you work through them)_ have him nodding.

"I get off in five minutes." Lilliana offers, "And I get a workers discount."

So that's how Jace Herondale (formerly Wayland or Morgenstern, and sometimes Lightwood), war hero and man considered best Shadowhunter of his generation, found himself sitting at a back table of gay bar in Manhattan, spilling his tragic and strange romantic story.

* * *

"It started when I met this girl." Jace begins, after they get seated with their drinks and he's introduced himself.

Sam boos, and Lilliana ( _call me Lilly)_ elbows him in the side. "What? No good story starts like that. Except you and Selina's, but you guys are couple goals."

Ignoring them, Jace goes on. "We met at this nightclub and I just. She was beautiful, mysterious and I fell for her like _that._ Kinda pathetic, looking back on it. We had this whirlwind _thing_ that all came to a halt when we found out we were brother and sister."

Sam nearly spits out his drink. " _Wow,_ unexpected incest. This story's off to a great start."

"We weren't _actually_ siblings. Her mom had left her dad before she was born, because he was kinda crazy. She never met him, and I was raised by him for the first several years of my life, as a foster situation. But I didn't know that. I thought he was my real father. Some other stuff I won't go into happened and I was moved to another foster family because we thought he was dead. Fast forward, me and Clary are getting to know each other, even kiss a few times. Then dear old dad shows up, not actually dead. He's her biological dad, and her mom had a boy who would be my age before she ran away. He was believed to be dead in a fire. Wasn't actually, but that's a whole nother thing."

"Wow, lots of fake deaths in this story too." Sam says.

"You don't know the half of it. Anyway, we're totally disgusted with ourselves. And Clary had this friend, total goof, giant nerd, completely in love with Clary. Didn't like me from the beginning, gladly becomes her rebound. _They_ start dating. But they really are not good together and have been friends long enough that they are practically siblings. By the time we find out the bastard lied and I'm not her brother, Clary and Simon have broken up, we try dating again but it's too damn weird. We break it off, Clary figured out she's a lesbian, starts dating my foster sister, Izzy."

Finishing off his drink, Sam looks a bit disappointed, in a very over dramatic way. "That was not as gay as you lead me to believe it was going to be." He says disappointedly.

Jace holds up a hand to stop him. "Thrust me, that's only the beginning."

Lilly waves an arm to get the attention of the server who had replaced her. "I have a feeling we're going to need more drinks. This round's on me."

Once their order has been placed Jace gets back to his story. "I think I should start this part by informing you that I had three foster siblings who I love fiercely. Max is still tiny, Izzy's my age and now dating Clary, and Alec is a bit older than me and the one I'm closest to." _In ways you can't even imagine._ "And for years, he was in love with me."

"I hate to agree with Sam, but this is a lot more incest, or semi incest, than expected."

"I'm not really related to him." Jace can't help but defend his parabatai. "And he wasn't _really_ in love with me. I was just a safe, straight, unattainable crutch for him while he battled intense self hatred Simon tells me is called internalized homophobia."

Lilly nods. "A powerful force, as I well know."

"So we lived for years, Alec pretending he wasn't gay and didn't feel more than brotherly feelings for me. Then the whole Clary drama happens, and Alec comes out of it with a boyfriend named Magnus. Great dude, even if I was sceptical of him in the beginning.

"But we were raised very...sheltered life. Alec and Izzy were my only real friends. And suddenly they both have steady partners, and I find myself alone."

Stopping to take a sip of his newest beer, Jace goes over how much of the next part he's going to share.

"And so does Simon. He has a thing with this other girl, Maia, who I also had a bit of a thing with a few months before. But it was really bad timing for her, so they break up. And Simon and I just kind of...fall together."

"Ah, let me guess, this is where you have your big gay crisis that less you into our arms tonight." Sam predicts.

"Basically, yeah. We start hanging out, he is really nerdy and makes me watch a ton of movies and gets me addicted to video games, and we play music together. He's a musician kinda, and the man who wasn't really my father taught me piano really young, and I still play. At first it's like, hey this guy isn't annoying _all_ the time, he's fun to hang out with."

"And _boom_ you start having inappropriate dreams about him without clothes on!"

"Sam I swear, if you don't stop interrupting…" Lilly glares and doesn't finish her threat. She doesn't have to.

"No. That's-no." To his utter mortification, Jace finds he's blushing a bit. "I found myself wanting to kiss his cheek and hold his hand and. A ton of domestic bullshit I've never wanted to do with anyone in my life."

Lilly nods, leaning forward slightly. "So that's your big gay relavation? If your brother and sister are both in same sex relationships, what's so big about you wanting one?"

Jace studies his hands, trying to figure out how to word his feelings, especially since he couldn't explain the parabatai bond to these Mundanes. "I just- if I was going to have feelings for a guy, _why_ did it have to be Simon? Why couldn't it be Alec, we match so much better. Have years of experience together, and it would have saved him so much heartbreak over the years."

"So your gay freak out isn't over liking a guy, it's over liking the _wrong_ guy?" Sam looks surprised. "How did I read you so wrong? The black leather, flirty instincts, tattoo's zi had you pegged as woman killer looking to make fun of some gays, then deeply closeted self hating dude bro."

It takes him a minute to remember that to the Mundanes, his runes seem to be tattoos. And that here, all black leather is a fashion statement, not the norm. Of course Sam had jumped to conclusions based on how he sees the world.

"I guess you could put it that way. I came here tonight to try and figure out why my brain decided nerdy little Simon, who is kinda pathetically unable to defend himself most of the time, who I don't understand half the time, was the person I'd move on to after the heartbeat that was Clary."

Lilly nods like that makes perfect sense. "Your brain is most likely moving on in the only way it knows how. If you've never felt this way about guys before, it might be a one off thing. Is that why you came here? To see if there were other, non Simon guys who appealed to you?"

"She's studying to be a psychiatrist," Sam confides in a low voice. "Makes her annoyingly good at getting into people's heads.

That comment earns him about elbow in the gut.

"I'm not actually sure." Admits Jace. "I have this habit of throwing myself into situations without thinking them through all the way. Makes Alec want to kill me a lot. So that's it. My story of...what did you call it? Questioning?"

Sam and Lilly consider him for a moment. "That was an... interesting story." The woman finally says.

 _You don't know the half of it._ Jace thinks about saying. _I forgot to mention I hunt demons, Alec and I's souls are bound together by ancient magic, making me think I was falling in love with my sister was the least evil thing Valentine did, he also killed me. And let's not forget Simon is now a vampire, and able to walk in the sun because of my blood and I sometimes still dream of his lips on my wrist._ They'd think he was crazy, not to mention how very illegal that would be to tell them.

"I still don't see what the big deal is." Sam states with a dismissive flick of his hand. "So what if he's not someone you ever saw yourself with. So what if your history is a bit strange. Embrace your new found gayness, make your move. Wait, is he into guys?"

"Yes." Jace knows that for sure, having heard all about Simon's failed attempt to ask out Raphael Santiago. "Also, I'm not gay. I still like girls."

"Bisexual then. I still say go for it."

"Ignoring him, there's a reason he's never been in a relationship for more than a few weeks." Lilly advises. "You don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with. Not come out, or express your feelings. I would recommend not pushing these feelings down though. It won't work out well. Explore your newfound sexuality, but remember it's _your_ identity, your attraction, your feelings. They belong to you and you alone."

 _Bisexual._ Jace mouths the word to himself. It fits Magnus, with his long history of male and female lovers. It fits Izzy, her attraction to Meliorn and Clary both.

And perhaps it can fit Jace too.

**Author's Note:**

> Second fic I've written today, I'm on a roll. If you like the sound of mundae pinning teenage clizzy, check out the seventh work in this series, written and posted this morning
> 
> Thanks for reading, tell me what you think!


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